A number on Cameron

Your piece on Cameron (The Jakarta Post, June 28, 1995), the hairdresser hooked on rhythm, elevated hair cutting, a grease- laden operation, to an opulent, mercurial feat has lionized Cameron.

The conventional wisdom is: one thing at a time. Instilled as rote: "Work while you work; and play while you play; and that is the way to be happy and gay."

Enter Cameron, with his penchant for show-boating. According to your graphic, blow by blow account of what he did in Shangri- La, he could do two things simultaneously, nonchalantly and successfully: swing and sway, shape and set the hair and call the outcome a style.

Cameron, so to say, if what he did was real and not some Gogia Pasha stuff, has defied gravity and redefined focus. Quite awesome; but not really so.

To be honest, your account only made me miss the barber of my childhood days, someone genuine. To boot, he was also skilled in doing two things at one time. But probably unlike Cameron, his side-suits were stronger than his trump-suit. Of course, he had no notions of "Hair-Dressing." In his reckoning, what he did was a personal hygiene-operation, to keep busy men free of lice. As for style, he regarded himself not as an horticulturist; but as a simple gardener. But he did not Ramba or Samba; that he did when he was high, after sunset, not at work.

At work, he gossiped, in his style which was torrential and gushing; intensity, pervasive and unceasing.

These technicians of yore will be simply turning in their graves upon learning that today, a woman's head, which they honored and kept away from, is regarded as an unkempt lawn, that needed mowing, weeding, slashing and copious spraying. Incidentally, until now I had heard only of insecticide spray. So, I was intrigued by your report which said that Cameron was generously using spray. My friend, however, clarified, that Cameron did not use hair-spray for de-licing, but as a stiffener; and needlessly added that the spray only stiffened hair.

Cameron is not just a hairdresser. He is a child of the market-forces, working his road show, hobnobbing with the gullible, and hawking his know-how, in a strident splash. But developing countries have coined a new slogan to acquire technology. "Micro chips yes, potato chips, no." Where does Cameron figure? Is he a cut above the two chips? Probably so. From the way ladies have flocked to him from far and wide, eager to put up with indignities, may be his quixotic technology is rated as a blue chip.

G.S. EDWIN

Jakarta